Worse things have happened in the last week or two. Worse things have been said. Yet what sticks in my mind and won't go away are a few sentences that came out of Nancy Pelosi's mouth during her marathon speech to the House last Wednesday. She was there, on the House floor, to speak up for the so-called “Dreamers” – people who were brought illegally to America by their parents when they were children and who now want to be accorded legal residency, if not citizenship. As Pelosi and other advocates for “Dreamers” have tirelessly asserted, some of them have...

Former Caracas Mayor and prominent opposition leader Antonio Ledezma has escaped house arrest and fled to Colombia. Colombian immigration authorities say in a statement that Mr Ledezma entered the country legally on Friday by crossing the Simon Bolivar bridge separating the two countries.

Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. is running for Congress, challenging Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village), who represents the southern central coast and most of Ventura County, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission on Monday. Attempts to reach the Republican candidate were unsuccessful Monday, but GOP strategist Charles Moran, who will serve as Sabato’s fundraiser, confirmed the run. Strategist Jeff Corless will serve as a top adviser. Sabato is a longtime actor best known for roles in “General Hospital” and “Melrose Place” and as a model for Calvin Klein underwear. In recent years he has appeared in several reality...

It appears Lazard's investment banker Antonio Weiss' "help" in tax inversions is not 'unpatriotic' enough to scare President Obama off - as we suspect Weiss' bundling and donating help more than offset any ethical challenges. However, in a somewhat eye-opening financial disclosure, Bloomberg reports that Obama's nominee for undersecretary of Treasury for domestic finance, has between $54 million and $203 million in assets spread across various family trusts and his anticipated compensation in 2014 is between $5 million and $25 million. It's good to know the 'people' are well-represented once again in Washington...

Authorities have confirmed that one gunman has been wounded and that five kidnapping victims have been rescued following a Wednesday afternoon shootout in a busy downtown Reynosa shopping district. Mexico's Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA) confirmed that a shootout took place in the "peatonal" or "pedestrian shopping area" of downtown Reynosa on Wednesday afternoon. SEDENA officials reported that soldiers were in the area when they came under fire from an unknown number of men. Reynosa residents reported the gunfire on the social media network Twitter. SEDENA officials reported that shootout ended with one gunman being wounded and five alleged kidnapping...

Police combed a coastal neighborhood of Georgia in search of two suspects from 10 to 15 years, accused of killing a baby and wounding her mother in a robbery attempt. And on the afternoon of Friday reported the arrest of two suspects aged 14 and 17 years for the vicious crime.

Like a beautiful butterfly emerging from his cocoon, a remarkable political metamorphosis is taking place right before our eyes. You won't see this on the Nature Channel; instead you have to watch the savants on CNN and MSNBC to witness Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa transform from a "Failure," as Los Angeles Magazine called him in 2009, into a statesman. From their offices high above New York's Sixth Avenue the editors of Time Magazine have also discovered mayoral virtues invisible from Ventura Boulevard. Adam Nagourney of The New York Times gave "Tony the Butterfly" two thumbs up, claiming, "His record is substantial...

Los Angeles police used nearly a dozen undercover detectives to infiltrate the Occupy LA encampment before this week's raid to gather information on the anti-Wall Street protesters' intentions, according to media reports Friday. None of the officers slept at the camp, but they tried to blend in during the weeks leading up to the raid to learn about plans to resist or use weapons against police, a police source told the Los Angeles Times. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing. The undercover work yielded information that some protesters were preparing bamboo spears and...

A 21-year-old Baltimore man has been arrested for attempting to blow up a military recruitment center in Catonsville with a fake bomb supplied by federal agents. Federal authorities say Antonio Martinez, also known as Muhammad Hussain, attempted to detonate what he believed to be a vehicle bomb this morning at the Armed Forces Career Center in the 5400 block of Baltimore National Pike. Court records paint Martinez as obsessed with Jihad and intent on punishing the military. He praised Nidal Hassan, the U.S. Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, and discussed obtaining weapons and shooting up military...

Arguing that the short-term pain of increased taxes is worth the long-term gain of permanent budget reform, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up some major Los Angeles endorsements for a raft of ballot propositions designed to rescue state finances. "One of the most important things on issues is to get local political leaders, law enforcement leaders and business leaders to support us," Schwarzenegger said at a news conference staged at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Sheriff Lee Baca and Chamber President Gary Toebben announced their support for the six measures on the May 19 special election...

With Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa visiting the Capitol today in an attempt to salvage his ambitious plan to take over and reform the historically troubled L.A. Unified School District, the Democrat has emerged as an unusual factor in this year’s unusual governor’s race. The former Assembly speaker, a rising Democratic superstar, is still officially neutral in the race between moderate Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides. Villaraigosa, a darling of LA progressives when he first ran for mayor in 2001 -- the LA Weekly, for one, devoted issue after issue to extolling his various...

Commission makes San Antonio's sweet deal even sweeter By T.A. BADGER Associated Press Writer SAN ANTONIO — Things looked sweet for San Antonio under the Pentagon's proposed base-closure plan. This week's voting made it even sweeter. While the nine-member Base Closure and Realignment Commission voted Thursday to end the military's presence at Brooks City-Base, it overrode the Defense Department's recommendations by keeping one of Brooks' key medical research missions and some 300 jobs in San Antonio. That vote came a day after the commission opted to keep the 800-job Cryptologic Systems Group, which services communications equipment for federal intelligence agencies,...

Los Angeles Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa got rock-star treatment Wednesday on his first trip to the nation's capital since his stunning election victory. In between standing ovations and signing autographs at a series of speeches, the city's first Hispanic mayor in more than a century told a liberal organization that Democrats are not succeeding nationally because their ranks are too homogeneous. "We need to look long and hard within our movement. You look around this room, and you don't see the kind of diversity we need," Villaraigosa told a mostly white audience at a Campaign for America's Future event. In his...

As he begins to put together his administration, Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa has a broad mandate from his landslide victory and surprisingly few commitments to City Hall's insiders and major power players. Mayor James Hahn had worked hard over the past four years to cultivate business, labor and civic leaders -- many of them former Villaraigosa backers -- and had gone into the campaign with most of the city's power brokers on his team. But as Hahn appeared headed for defeat in the campaign's closing weeks, many of those same people reached out to the challenger. And since Villaraigosa's election Tuesday,...